It's hard to believe that Prince left for the after party in the sky exactly one year ago. Somehow it makes sense that "controversy" surrounds the planned release today of a "new" EP of music he recorded between 2006 and 2008. Although the information claimed 6 new songs, it is actually 5 songs and a remix of one. I've heard it all and my personal favorite is "No One Else" but the only one I can post at this time is the track "Deliverance."

Here's a batch of great new stuff in no particular order that makes my life worth living.

The Orwells song above is my favorite song at the moment of this posting, but the new album that Matthew Ryan is about to release (produced by Brian Fallon) is not only his best work ever, but likely in contention for album of the year.

HAPPY 70th BIRTHDAY James Osterberg, jr. aka iggy pop

Sorry for the silence here lately but I've been up to my ass in alligators, as the saying goes, rebuilding the home music server due to a very untimely "blue screen of death" which resulted in 6 TB (yes that's 6 terabytes) of music files rendered unreadable. Talk about a panic attack... I've been working on digitizing my music collection for nearly a decade and the initial shock was akin to walking into my music rooms and finding all the shelves empty. Thankfully, nothing was lost and everything is completely back to what constitutes as normal in my little world. Whew!

In the not too distant future I expect building a digital music database that you can access from anywhere will be a lot more common, but if you were to start now all the tools you need are readily available. Here's a handy checklist for anyone interested:

Mike Marrone

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